Mary Magdalene is a tantalizingly enigmatic figure
in all four New Testament gospels. Little is said of her, but all of
what is said is fascinating. The same can be said of various other
characters of whom the New Testament provides only glimpses, such as
Priscilla, Aquila, Agabus, Apollos, Junia, etc. Mary Magdalene, we
discover, was one of a number of wealthy female disciples of Jesus, who
traveled with his entourage and paid for their food and accommodations
(Mk.15:40‑41; Lk. 8:1‑3). Though this would be common enough in
Hellenistic Mystery Religions, the situation is really unparalleled as
far as we know in Judaism. Mary Magdalene seems even to have been the
leader of this group of women since she is always mentioned first when
any of their names are listed, and hers is the only name appearing in
all such lists (Mk.15:40­ 41, 47; 16:1; Matt. 27:55‑56, 61; 28:1; Lk.
8:‑3; 24:10). What does it mean that the group of women had a
leader? Also, Mary is said to have been a recovered demoniac, healed by
Jesus. Christian legend makes her into a reformed prostitute as well,
while Christian speculation all the way up into nineteenth century
Mormonism and Jesus Christ Superstar has made her Jesus' (at
least would‑be) lover. Some gospel accounts have her as the first
witness of the risen Christ. Yet all these are only intriguing scraps.
One receives the impression that these details are the lingering
after‑echoes of some great explosion.

In
the rest of the New Testament and in orthodox Christianity of the next
few centuries Mary Magdalene has been tacitly relegated to president of
Jesus' "ladies' auxiliary." But the situation is strikingly different
when we turn to Gnostic Christian documents which were not included in
the New Testament, various gospels and related writings of the first
few centuries C.E. Suddenly we find Mary Magdalene as a, or even the,
prime revealer of the gnosis of Jesus, his closest disciple, and the
greatest of the apostles! I will endeavor to show what these two starkly
contrasting bodies of evidence have to do with one another and, if
possible, with the historical Mary Magdalene. To anticipate, I will
suggest that Mary Magdalene did receive visionary revelations and became
the apostle of an egalitarian, celibate Christianity which preached
spiritual marriage with Christ. I will suggest that other currents of
earliest Christianity reacted to her radical gospel by minimizing and
distorting her role in the ministry of Jesus and the early Christian
community, and that her apostolic role was preserved in Gnostic circles
and their sacred texts.

The Gnostic Texts

First let us review the relevant
Gnostic texts and see what we can make of them. Perhaps the most famous
text is the concluding logion (114) of the Gospel of Thomas (first1
or second century C.E.). "Simon Peter said to them, 'Let Mary leave us,
for women are not worthy of Life.' Jesus said, 'I myself shall lead her
in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit
resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will
enter the Kingdom of Heaven." In the Gospel of Mary (second century C.E.),
Mary Magdalene is the chief revealer to the other disciples, telling of
a post‑resurrection vision in which Jesus showed her the course of the
liberated spirit on its way back to the Aeon. She encourages the male
disciples to take up the missionary task Jesus has assigned them. "Then
Mary stood up, greeted them all, and said to her brethren, 'Do not weep
and do not grieve or be irresolute, for his grace will be entirely with
you and will protect you. But rather let us praise his greatness, for he
has prepared us (and) made us into men"' (9:13‑21). Peter and Andrew
scoff at the revelation that Mary recounts. Peter says "'Did he really
speak privately with a woman (and) not openly to us? Are we to turn
about and listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?" Then Mary wept and
said to Peter, 'My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I
thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the
Savior?’ Levi answered and said to Peter, 'Peter, you have always been
hot‑tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the
adversaries. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to
reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well. That is why he loved
her more than us. Rather let us be ashamed and put on the perfect
man..."'2
(17:16‑18:1‑16). (Note the parallels to the Thomas logion: Jesus has
made her "worthy" and made them all "men.")

The Dialogue of the Savior
(second or third century C.E.) also presents Mary Magdalene as a
preeminent revealer, eliciting revelations by her astute questioning of
the risen Christ. "This word she spoke as a woman who knew the All"
(139:11‑12). "Mariam said, 'Tell me Lord, why I have come to this place,
to benefit or to suffer loss?' The Lord said, 'Because you reveal the
greatness of the revealer"' (140:15‑18). Similarly, the earlier of the
two documents comprising the Pistis Sophia (200‑250 C.E.) depicts a
group interview of the risen Christ by the disciples, and again Mary is
prominent. "Peter said: 'My Lord, let the women cease to question, in
order that we also may question.' Jesus said unto Mary and the women:
'Give opportunity to your men brethren, that they also may question"'
(vi:146).~Lt The later, lengthier section, the main documentary basis
for the Pistis Sophia (250‑300 A.D.) is clearer still on the primacy of
Mary, who asks fully thirty‑nine of the forty‑six questions addressed to
the living Jesus. "It came to pass then, when Mary had heard the Savior
say these words ["Who hath ears to hear, let him hear"], that she gazed
fixedly into the air for the space of an hour. She said: 'My Lord, give
commandment unto me to speak in openness.' And Jesus, compassionate,
answered and said unto Mary: 'Mary, thou blessed one, whom I will
perfect in all mysteries of these of the height, discourse in openness,
thou, whose heart is raised to the kingdom of heaven more than all thy
brethren"' (i:17).3

Peter is affronted. "And
Peter started forward and said unto Jesus: 'My Lord, we will not endure
this woman, for she taketh the opportunity from us and hath let none of
us speak, but she discourseth many times"' (i:36). After Peter says his
piece, "Mary came forward and said: 'My Lord, my mind is ever
understanding, at every time to come forward and set forth the
solution..., but I am afraid of Peter, because he threatened me and
hateth our sex"' (ii:72). The Gospel of Philip (250‑300 C.E.) contrasts
Mary with the heavenly Wisdom, mother of the angels. "And the companion
of the [Savior is] Mary Magdalene. [But Christ loved] her more than
[all] the disciples [and used to] kiss her [often] on her [mouth]. The
rest of [the disciples were offended] by it [and expressed disapproval].
They said to him, 'Why do you love her more than all of us?' The Savior
answered and said to them, 'Why do I not love you like her? When a blind
man and one who sees are both together in darkness, they are no
different from one another. When the light comes, then he who sees will
see the light, and he who is blind will remain in darkness ..."'
(63:34‑64:9).4

The preceding text is
probably cautiously euphemistic. "Kissing" was often employed to stand
for sexual intercourse,5
and this same gospel elsewhere says that "it is by a kiss that the
perfect conceive and give birth" (59:2‑3). Later still we are assured
that the implied sexual intercourse is purely spiritual and metaphorical
in nature (76:6‑9; 82:1‑10). Finally, one more depiction of Mary
Magdalene as the special recipient of post‑Easter revelations occurs in
the Greater Questions of Mary, yet another Gnostic dialogue. The text,
as that of the Lesser Questions of Mary, is not extant, but orthodox
heresiologist Epiphanius preserved a particularly juicy tidbit: "they
assert that he gave her a revelation, taking her aside to the mountain
and praying; and he brought forth from his side a woman and began to
[sexually] unite with her, and so, forsooth, taking his effluent, he
showed that 'we must so do, that we may live'; and how when Mary fell to
the ground abashed, he raised her up again and said to her: 'Why didst
thou doubt, O thou of little faith?"' (Panarion 26.8.2‑3).6
A striking and clear pattern emerges from these texts: Mary Magdalene,
an especially close disciple of Jesus already in his earthly lifetime,
is specially favored with post‑Easter revelations of a Gnostic
character. She is opposed by Peter, though neither he nor the other male
disciples can deny her privileged position. Her revelations entail
equality between women and men, thanks to the enabling grace of the
Savior who has made women as men, i.e., eliminated gender‑based
subordination by transcending sexuality altogether.This enlightenment is
symbolized as sexual union with Christ.

Elisabeth Schüssler
Fiorenza7
shows how virtually the same "becoming male" terminology familiar from
Gnostic texts occurs in Philo where it is more fully explained, and in
such a way that it makes sense of the Gnostic use of the terminology in
the manner I have suggested. For instance for Philo, spiritual
development by ascetical effort is "becoming male" because Philo
denominates the rational soul as "male," the irrational soul (i.e.,
emotions, appetites) "female." A person who thus finds God's grace to
grow spiritually has "become one." Cf. the Gospel of Thomas: "They shall
become a single one" (logion 4).8
What "becoming male" might mean for an early Christian woman apostle is
clear from The Acts of Paul, where Thecla shaves her hair and "sewed her
mantle into a cloak after the fashion of a man." Paul then charges her
"Go, and teach the word of God" (11:25, 40, 41). This gospel is a gospel
of celibacy: "Blessed are they that abstain (or the continent), for unto
them shall God speak" (11:5).9
Here is a woman who becomes an apostolic preacher by renouncing
sexuality and becoming as a man in appearance!10

Recent discussion of these
Gnostic texts has centered on the question of whether they reflect a
pro‑women polemic directed by Gnostics against the orthodox church and
its bishops. Mary Magdalene, it is suggested, was chosen as the
mouthpiece for pro‑women Gnostic views because she was known by all as a
prominent female gospel character and was not one of the Twelve, who
were already claimed as figureheads by the orthodox. She is female and a
"leftover" character. Elaine Pagels seems to imply that Mary Magdalene
is used simply as a literary figment when she suggests that the "secret
texts use the figure of Mary Magdalene to suggest that women's activity
challenged the leaders of the orthodox community, who regarded Peter as
their spokesman."11
Pheme Perkins rejects this contention as arbitrary. "We are skeptical of
those who use this picture of Mary to claim that Gnostics upheld
community leadership by women in opposition to the male dominated
hierarchy of the orthodox Church... Mary is the hero here not because of
an extraordinary role played by women in Gnostic communities, but
because she is a figure closely associated with Jesus to whom esoteric
wisdom may be attached."12
Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza sides with Pagels: "The debate between
various Christian groups on primacy in apostolic authority is reflected
in various apocryphal texts which relate the competition between Peter
and Mary Magdalene." "Those who claim the authority of Andrew and
Peter... argue against the teaching authority of women...," while their
opponents "appealed to the women disciples as scriptural precedents and
apostolic figures."13

The common assumption in
this debate is that Gnostics merely "used" Mary as a symbolic figure, a
"precedent," much as modern Christian feminists14
do when they argue that Mary Magdalene was in a manner of speaking
an "apostle" since "apostle" means "sent one," and she was "sent" to
proclaim the news of the resurrection to the Twelve. Those who argue
thusly seem to mean that solely on the strength of her activity on
Easter morning she can now serve as a kind of literary precedent
for women in ministry. I would suggest that, however one answers the
question of an intentional pro‑women polemic underlying the Mary
Magdalene texts, those texts should be recognized as strong evidence
that Mary Magdalene did in fact carry on an apostolic ministry in
circles receptive to her, circles which eventually contributed to the
great Gnostic movement of the early Christian centuries. On the face of
it, the texts surely suggest this. Peter is the mouthpiece for the ideas
of orthodox authorities in these texts, as also in non‑Gnostic texts
both inside and outside the New Testament canon; obviously we can seldom
be certain Peter said the words or espoused the ideas attributed to him
in 2 Peter or the Apocalypse of Peter or the Pistis Sophia, but does
anyone doubt that Peter was an apostle? He is chosen as an appropriate
mouthpiece precisely because he had really been an apostle in some of
the circles which contributed to orthodox Christianity. It certainly
seems strange that Mary Magdalene would have been viewed as an analogous
and appropriate choice for a mouthpiece for Gnostic ideas if she had not
been remembered as an apostle in that stream of tradition.

As is well known, Gnostics
also made very specific claims to have derived tradition from some
within the circle of the Twelve, and this claim is made even in some of
the texts which prominently feature Mary. Even those who oppose her are
often pictured as Gnostic male apostles!
15 The point is
that the male apostles could be used and were used as figureheads for
Gnostic teaching; since they were readily available, why would Gnostic
writers feel forced to concoct an apostolic Mary out of sheer
imagination? Even other prominent male New Testament figures were
readily available and employed (e.g., Barnabas, Paul, Judas), so one
needn't create an apostle Mary. The texts we have been considering are
not the sole Gnostic evidence that Mary Magdalene actually was an
apostle to the (proto‑?)Gnostics rather than just a later literary
mouthpiece for them. The Carpocration Gnostics of Egypt made explicit
appeal to Mary Magdalene together with Salome and Martha as the original
teachers of their traditions. Salome appears in the Gospel according to
the Egyptians quoted by Clement of Alexandria and elicits from Christ
teaching about the transcendence of sexuality. "When Salome asked, 'How
long will death have power?' the Lord answered, 'So long as ye women
bear children"' (Stromateis, 111.45). Clement also tells us that
Epiphanes, son of Carpocrates, taught the equality of female and male (Stromateis,
11.2.6), a doctrine, as we have seen, elsewhere associated with Mary
Magdalene's revelation.

Finally we may mention
Irenaeus' lament that Marcosian Gnostics were active in his own district
of the Rhone Valley (Adversus Haereses 1.13.5). One may wonder if
the late medieval Greek life of Mary has just possibly preserved genuine
tradition when it records a missionary journey of Mary Magdalene to
Marseilles.16
Admittedly any connection here is wholly speculative.

The New Testament Easter
Traditions

Next we will consider some of the
features of Mary Magdalene's portrayal in the canonical New Testament
documents to see whether we may follow our "trajectory" further back
into first‑century Christianity. To anticipate, we will see how a
number of hitherto‑puzzling points are newly elucidated on the
hypothesis that an actual apostolic claim by Mary Magdalene underlies
and conditions the various New Testament treatments of her.

We may begin with the most
confusing complex of New Testament material dealing with Mary Magdalene,
the stories of Easter morning. It is at this point that the tenuous
agreement between the gospels collapses. In the four gospels, the
traditions underlying them, the Markan appendix, and Paul's traditional
list of resurrection appearances in 1 Corinthians 15:3‑8, we have a wide
range of statements or implications about Mary Magdalene's role in the
events of Easter morning. At one extreme, Jesus appears to Mary and
to no one else (as I hope soon to show). At the other extreme Mary
plays no role whatever. For most of Christian history the Easter
morning material has been interpreted according to the apologetical
needs of the Church as evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Since
most Christians read the stories with a view toward buttressing or even
corroborating faith in Jesus' resurrection, the assumption long
prevailed that the texts were written with exactly that intent. Even
Bultmann sees it so when he castigates Paul for trying to prove the
resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:3‑8 .17
Conservative
scholars viewed all the Easter materials as strong evidence and tended
to argue that the gospels' empty tomb and resurrection stories were
compilations of eyewitness testimony (whether at a near or far remove)
and as such bore the customary marks of eyewitness testimony such as
inconsistency in detail and accidental omission due to limited
observational perspectives.18
The great test all such theories had to pass was to reconstruct a
plausible composite from which all versions might derive. No one
appears to have solved this puzzle very convincingly, at least without
paring away sizable chunks of that supposedly strong evidence.

As to why Mary Magdalene
and the other women do not appear in Paul's list, the conservative
suggestion is that since women were not regarded as credible witnesses
in the Hellenistic world, to have adduced the testimony of Mary and the
others would have weakened, not strengthened, the case for the
resurrection.19
On this understanding we must suppose that this caution occurred only to
the framers of Paul's list, since all other Easter accounts give Mary
and the women at least some role. Critical scholars who take a dimmer
view of the evidential value of the Easter materials explain the
differences in various ways. The various empty tomb stories, as well as
most of the resurrection appearance stories, are held to be late
compositions originally of a liturgical, theological, or polemical
character, and so historically worthless as evidence for the
resurrection.20
They are judged late by comparison with the list in 1 Corinthians 15
which Paul seems to be quoting as the normative tradition in a form
fixed by the early Jerusalem apostles, James the Just and the Twelve.
The appearances of the risen Christ listed there are not stories, only
notices of the fact of Christ's having been seen by this individual or
that group. As the context shows, Paul himself understood the risen
Christ to have become "a life‑giving spirit" (1 Cor. 15:45) with a
"spiritual body" (v. 44) not a "natural body" (or "physical body"‑-
RSV). Of course the gospel resurrection accounts show the risen Christ
with a flesh‑and‑blood body (Matt. 28:9; Lk. 24:39‑40; John 24:27).
Since Paul's discussion is demonstrably earlier than the gospel
accounts, it can be assumed that the latter are later in date and
conception. On this understanding any Easter accounts involving Mary
Magdalene must be late and inauthentic since she and the other women
are not mentioned in Paul's list.

A newer understanding of
the Easter morning materials refrains from retrojecting onto the texts
the worries of later Christian apologetics and approaches the text more
inductively with an eye toward the internal purpose‑clues of the texts
themselves. Seen this way the resurrection appearance stories and
notices have to do with inaugurating the apostolic mission of the church
and establishing the apostolic credentials of individuals. I n three of
the gospels, plus the Markan appendix, the risen Christ commands the
disciples to go preach his word to the nations (Matt. 28:19; Lk.
24:47‑49; John 20:21; Mk. 16:15). Luke makes much of the resurrection
appearances as credentials for true apostles (Acts 1:2‑3, 21‑22; 2:32;
3:15; 5:31‑32; 10:41‑42; 13:30‑31). Paul no sooner lists the appearances
to Peter, the Twelve, James, all the apostles, and himself than he adds
"so we preached and so you believed" (15:11). In another place he
defends his authority with the same credential: "Am I not an apostle?
Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?" (1 Cor. 9:1).21

I suggest that if this
"apostolic commission/credential" model is to be preferred, then the
wildly varying place of Mary Magdalene in the traditions can be
intelligibly explained. The differences among the traditions are not
just a random jumble. Some systematic sense can be made of them if we
see that at issue in all the stories is how much, if any, apostolic
authority is to be granted to Mary. The various traditions represent a
range of responses to this question. Demonstrating this will entail a
brief survey of all seven basic stages of the evolution of the
tradition. (In what follows I do not mean that the canonical texts
discussed were written in the order in which I are considering
them, but rather that the New Testament writers/redactors have severally
preserved various stages of a tradition which evolved in the
order I am reconstructing here.)

First, we must deal with
the originally independent pericope preserved now in John 20:1, 11‑18.
Scholars have long realized that this tradition has no integral
connection with the rest of the chapter in which it appears.22
It has been clumsily worked into its present context by the insertion of
vv. 2‑10, as can be seen from several considerations. Verse 2 has Mary
Magdalene run and tell the male disciples that the tomb is empty,
whereupon two of them return without her, yet she is somehow "back" at
the tomb in verse 11! Also verse 11 would open the question of why the
two male disciples missed seeing the two angels, since all there was to
be seen in the tomb in verses 6‑7 was the discarded grave clothes. Did
the angels hide at first? Or arrive late? Also, if the story were
originally of a piece with its present context, why is Mary told not to
touch Jesus in verse 17, while Thomas is told in verse 27 to touch
Jesus? And in the section 20:2‑10 Mary had visited the tomb with the
other women (v. 2) as in the other gospels, while in the section 20:1,
11‑18 she is alone.23
The most significant point is perhaps that verse 17, despite its other
difficulties, at least means that the ascension is imminent, though
instead of ascending Jesus goes on to make several other appearances in
the next chapter and a half!

It is the imminence of the
ascension which is the clue to the meaning of this pericope in its
original form before the evangelist used it (and co‑opted it) by
incorporating it into his gospel. I suggest that here we find an
approximation of the original version of the Mary Magdalene Easter
tradition and the starting point of the trajectory I traced through the
later Gnostic texts. According to John 20:1, 2‑10 Mary Magdalene sees
the risen Christ, and no one else does! This remarkable fact has
been ignored because of the habit of readers unconsciously to harmonize
this Easter story with the others in which Mary is told to tell the
Twelve to anticipate a meeting with the risen Christ. In this pericope
Christ most assuredly does not give Mary this message. Instead,
he tells her that he is now about to ascend to the Father and for her
simply to inform the Twelve that he is going. If the text is read
on its own, it is clear that the Twelve will not see Jesus but are only
relayed Jesus' farewell. Reading this pericope in the light of those
later Gnostic texts, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we have
discovered one version of the original claim that Mary received unique
revelations from the risen Christ.24

Of course it is no accident
that the text has not been thus recognized since John has, so to speak,
removed the sting from the original pericope by making it the first in a
series. Even in its present, canonical form the story runs
counter to the Petrine tradition attested elsewhere in the New
Testament that Peter was the first to see the Lord (Lk. 24:34; 1 Cor.
15:5). It may be that the fourth evangelist was himself oblivious to
the implication of the story in its original form, that he, too,
unconsciously harmonized it with the other appearance stories he had
heard and which he used in the chapter. But it may also be that he was
trying to de‑fuse the explosive story. The second stage in the
evolution of the tradition is preserved in the Markan appendix (Mk.
16:9‑20), added by a later hand to supplement the rather abrupt
conclusion to Mark's gospel. Here, too, we find the first appearance of
the risen Lord to Mary who tells the Twelve that she has seen him and
nothing more (vv. 9‑10). She does not predict further appearances, but
the narrator does go on to recount more appearances. It does not occur
to him that Mary was vouchsafed more than chronological priority.

The third stage is
represented by Matthew 28:1‑10. This time, Mary Magdalene, accompanied
by other women disciples, visits the empty tomb and sees first an angel,
then the risen Christ, but Christ merely reiterates the charge of the
angel, that the women are to bid the Twelve to meet him in Galilee. We
must be careful here: Matthew has used Mark who, as we will see, had no
appearance of Christ to Mary (perhaps because he omitted it‑‑see below).
But on our hypothesis, Matthew knew from oral tradition that there had
been a reported appearance to Mary, so he supplies it (just as he goes
on to supply the appearance to the Twelve in Galilee which his source
Mark predicts but does not recount!). But why does Matthew make his
risen Christ merely parrot the angel's message? He only knew that Christ
was supposed to have appeared to the women at the tomb. Matthew did not
know what Christ had said, or if he did know Christ had said what he
says in John 20:17, a simple farewell to disciples who would not see
him, and judged it safest to have Christ merely echo the angel's words.
Thus the appearance of Christ to Mary is restored, but for Matthew Mary
receives no special revelation, nothing beyond what the angel
said. Again, Mary's temporal priority is preserved, itself a
significant fact, but her revelational priority is lost.

Luke 24:1‑12 preserves the
fourth stage in the evolution and domestication of the Mary tradition.
Now Mary and the women see the angels who direct them to tell the Twelve
to await the risen Christ, but they do notsee Christ himself.
Nor does Luke even in Acts say or imply that anyone but the Twelve "ate
and drank with him after his resurrection" (Acts 10: 41; 1:3‑4). Mary
Magdalene simply cannot have received any special revelations, much less
of a Gnostic (or proto‑Gnostic) character.25
But Mary and her sisters do carry out their instructions and tell the
male disciples (vv. 10‑11).

Mark's Easter account (16:1‑8), so
abrupt that both Matthew and Luke who used it felt compelled to add to
it, preserves the fifth stage in the logical progression. In his
version, not only do Mary and the other women never see Jesus, but they
pointedly disobey the injunction of the angel to tell the Twelve
of the resurrection! The gospel ends with these stark and strange words:
"And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and
astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for
they were afraid." For a long time the abruptness of this ending led
scholars to propose that Mark had written more, but that the autograph
manuscript had become damaged and the ending lost after Mark's departure
or death and before a single copy could be made.26
Or that Mark himself had keeled over dead in midsentence! But if either
(inherently unlikely) circumstance had obtained, surely the lack would
have been immediately supplied by an amanuensis or disciple, just as
second century Christian scribes later began adding spurious endings,
found in various later manuscripts. The fact that Mark circulated for a
long time with nothing after verse 8 (both Matthew and Luke, writing in
the late first century, knew Mark's text in this form) certainly means
it was regarded as a complete text. It was only much later, when readers
of the more ample Easter narratives of Matthew, Luke, and John had
become dissatisfied with Mark's abrupt version, that scribes concluded
bycomparison with the other gospels that Mark must
be incomplete.

Some have pointed out that
it is grammatically irregular to end a sentence with the conjunction ~
as Mark does in verse 8 (ephobounto gar-- "for they were
afraid"), but Mark elsewhere shows himself no stickler for grammatical
perfection, and other such sentences are known in Hellenistic Greek
Literature. If we may take it as most likely that Mark meant to end his
text where he did, we must ask why he concluded the events of his story
where he did. Why no resurrection appearances? As Charles H. Talbert
has shown,27
the empty tomb by itself would have been recognized by an ancient Jewish
or pagan reader as a fitting notice that Jesus had risen from the dead
and been exalted to heaven. Of many religious heroes including Enoch,
Elijah, Moses, Empedocles, Hercules, Peregrinus, Apollonius of Tyana,
and Romulus the story had been told that after their disappearance
searchers could find no sign of their bodies and that (in some cases) a
heavenly voice had announced their ascension. An empty tomb narrative
with its angelic interpreter would be a perfectly adequate ending to a
gospel, especially as Mark's is the first known gospel, written when
there could be no convention that a gospel "must" end with resurrection
appearances.

As Reginald H. Fuller and
others have shown, Mark probably took such a self‑sufficient empty tomb
story from oral tradition and augmented it with the angel's prediction
of a resurrection appearance to the Twelve in Galilee (v. 7).28
Ludger Schenke shows that Mark also added verse 8b, the puzzling
conclusion that the women disobeyed the angel's order to relay this
news to the Twelve.29
Why would Mark thus risk obscuring the effect of the story? It must be
admitted that once one adds predictions of an appearance, it is a
bit abrupt to choke off the narrative without recounting the appearance.
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza argues that Mark intends the reader to
infer that Mary and the others did carry out their instructions.
She sees verse 8b as parallel to Mark 1:44, where Jesus heals a leper
and tells him, "See that you say nothing to anyone; but go show yourself
to the priest..." The leper is not supposed to tell anyone else.
Similarly, Fiorenza reasons, the women went straight to the Twelve and
discharged their duty without stopping along the way.30
I believe that Fiorenza is unconsciously harmonizing Mark with the other
gospels. Without reference to Matthew and Luke, Mark could not have
expected his intended readers to assume any such thing.

Besides, Mark 1:44 does not
mean that the leper was to tell the priest what he was not
to tell others. He is simply to make the appropriate cleansing
sacrifice, not to tell the priest that it was Jesus who cured him. Not
only so, but Mark seems to have added a reiteration ("for they were
afraid") to the statement of numinous awe original to the pericope ("for
trembling and astonishment had come upon them"). The latter provides the
women's reaction to the angelophany, so the former must intend to
explain why the women subsequently kept quiet. They remained silent
because they were afraid, not because of the urgency of their task.

Why does Mark have the women disobey
the angel's instructions (instructions which he has pointedly inserted
into the original pericope in order to have the women disobey them!)? It
might be suggested that the silence of the women is a further instance
of Mark's redactional Messianic Secret theme, of a piece with the
instant silencing of the demons and warnings not to report Jesus'
healings (Mk. 1:34, 43, 3:11‑12; 5:43; 7:36; 8:30).31
But this cannot be, because as Mark himself clearly says, the secret is
to be kept only until the resurrection (9:9), not afterward.

Günther Bornkamm suggests
that the disobedient silence of the women was an apologetical device
intended to explain how the story was true even though late, not known
when the 1 Corinthians 15 list was compiled.32
This is possible but as Fuller counters, it seems to retroject the
modern concerns of apologetics onto first century Christianity.33

I believe the true solution to this
puzzle was finally proposed by Theodore J. Weeden,who demonstrated a
thoroughgoing tendency in Mark's gospel to discredit the disciples of
Jesus at every opportunity. The idea is that Mark represented another
faction in the early church than that (presumably the circumcision
party) which appealed to the Twelve as their figureheads. Perhaps Mark
represented Pauline Christianity as Ralph Martin suggests.34
Weeden sees the ending of the gospel as Mark's final opportunity to say
that the disciples failed Jesus every time they had the chance.35
Weeden has shown the way but not followed out all the implications.
Factional polemics are indeed the source of the story of the women’s
disobedience, but not polemics against the Twelve. As Weeden shows, the
Twelve are Mark's favorite targets, as they bumble and misunderstand
their way through the story, but Mark has other enemies as well. His
scorn for the relatives of Jesus (probably especially including James
the Just) is clear from his use of the pericope 3:19b‑21, 31‑35
(composed by Mark or someone before him as a reversal of Exodus 18,
where Moses does receive his arriving family and accepts their advice on
how to ease the burden of his ministry), in which Jesus repudiates his
natural family because they think him mad, as well as Mark's
redactional juxtaposition of this text with the Beelzebul controversy
with its "house divided" saying (3:25).

The third faction Mark
repudiates is, I suggest, the women disciples of Jesus led by Mary
Magdalene. Aware of the claim of Mary to have received Easter
revelations, Mark suppresses any such appearance, having Mary see only
an angel, and having her disobey the angel at that! She is a
mere third-hand messenger, and not even a good one. If Mark meant to end
his gospel with a polemical blow against Mary Magdalene and her
adherents, then his ending makes much more sense than it would on any
other proposed reading. So, to recap, Mark preserves the fifth stage, in
which Mary not only sees an angel instead of Jesus, but does not even
obey the angel. Stage four at least had her obey the angel.

Stage six occurs in the pericope
(John 20:2‑10) the fourth evangelist has inserted into the originally
distinct story of verses 1, 11‑18 discussed under stage one above. Here
we have another version of the original, self‑sufficient empty tomb
story underlying Mark 16:1‑6, 8a. Note that it is simply the absence of
Jesus from the tomb and from his discarded grave clothes that convinces
the Beloved Disciple, exactly the desired effect of such a story on its
reader. But of course John has only picked up this originally
independent empty tomb pericope to assimilate it to his composite whole.
Mary Magdalene's role here is minimal. She does not even see angels in
this version! We may wonder with Bultmann whether the story originally
showed Mary, not the male disciples, wondering at the grave­
clothes.36
If so, the reason
for the alteration is not far to seek: Peter's primacy is restored. He,
not Mary, is the first to see the interior of the empty tomb.37
But at any rate, Mary now receives no revelation at all, either from
Christ or from an angel. Her role is merely to fetch the male disciples.

The final stage, the
seventh, is preserved in the I Corinthians 15 list. All mention of Mary
Magdalene is omitted, and not by Paul but by these Jerusalem Christians
who delivered the list to him. Mary has been omitted because her claim
to apostleship has been denied.38
The hypothesis of increasing denial of Mary Magdalene's claims to
apostolic credentials thus provides a paradigm for explaining much of
the bewildering confusion in the Easter materials vis‑a‑vis Mary
Magdalene. It might be objected that there was a much simpler way to
dispense with Mary's apostleship: if that was really their intent, why
did not all the gospel writers do as the compiler(s) of the 1
Corinthians 15 list did and omit her altogether? Simply because she was
too well known as an associate of Jesus. We have a parallel in Luke's
(admittedly less severe) treatment of Paul in Acts. Except for failing
to correct his source in Acts 14, Luke scrupulously avoids calling Paul
an apostle and relegates Paul's Damascus Road experience to the status
of a post‑ascension vision 39
rather than as Paul himself claims, a resurrection appearance.~ Even
Paul's opponents cannot ignore him, so Luke must redraw the picture to
make Paul acceptable to them. Similarly Mary Magdalene could not be
completely censored, and significantly, the later Gnostic texts
considered above bear this out. In those traditions the male disciples
are shown objecting to Mary but as unable to gainsay her claims. I
suggest that these traditions preserve the historical truth of the
matter. Mary was remembered as a prominent figure by all segments of the
Christian movement but in orthodox circles her claims were ignored and
the reasons for her obvious prominence were forgotten.

Demoniac and Prostitute

The orthodox polemic against Mary
Magdalene has left its mark in two other places in the canonical gospel
tradition. I will briefly consider these. First, Mary is said (Lk. 8:2;
Mk.16:9) to have been possessed at one time by seven demons. Of course,
whatever we think about the actual nature of demon‑possession, this
tradition is certainly plausible. Jesus exorcised demons aplenty, and if
Mary's affliction had been healed by Jesus it would certainly explain
her devotion to him. But there is another way to view it.
Demon‑possession was a favorite charge to level against someone
perceived as a heretic. In the Gospel of John Jesus' opponents cry out
"You have a demon!" (7:20) and "Are we not right in saying that you are
a Samaritan and have a demon?" (8:48) and "He has a demon, and he is
mad; why listen to him?" (10:20). Similarly, the author of I Timothy
stigmatizes Gnostics (those who espouse "what is falsely called
knowledge," or gnosis, 6:20) as "giving heed to deceitful spirits
and doctrines of demons" (4:1) For the author of I John, docetic
Gnostics prophesy by "the spirit of the antichrist" (4:3). Was
Mary Magdalene supposed by Luke and the author of the Markan appendix to
have been demon‑inspired in this sense? Or had the canonical
tradition which these two writers embody garbled earlier polemics that
Mary's heresies were demon‑inspired, misunderstood Mary as one
more afflicted demoniac (perhaps an epileptic), and retrojected the
"possession" into the days of Jesus' public ministry? If she was
possessed of seven devils but was a disciple of Jesus (so went the later
inference) Jesus must have cured her, which is how she came to follow
him. At any rate, it is hard to see how being tagged with the reputation
of sevenfold demon‑possession would not seriously undermine one's
credibility as an apostle. Mary Magdalene's reputation grew more
unsavory still. As is well known she has always been assumed to have
been a prostitute, usually on the tenuous basis of gratuitously
identifying her with both Mary of Bethany (John 12:1‑3) and the "sinner"
of Luke 7:36‑38, both of whom are shown anointing Jesus with expensive
perfume. While such a mingling of characters is a late harmonization, we
may actually find the root of the prostitution slur in the gospels.

We know that Jewish
anti‑Christian polemic ridiculed the doctrine of the virgin birth of
Jesus by claiming that Jesus was the illegitimate son of Mary of
Nazareth by a Roman soldier named Pandera. It seems obvious that "Jesus
son of Pandera" is a cruel pun derived from "Jesus son of the
parthenos (virgin)." Similarly, hostile scribes confused Mary of
Nazareth with Mary Magdalene and punned that "Magdalene" meant not "of
Magdala," a village in Galilee, but rather m'gaddla, "the hair
curler," a euphemism for a madam, since elaborate hairstyling was
regarded as the mark of a prostitute. If "Mary the hairdresser" was
Jesus' mother then he was the son of a Roman soldier and a Jewish
prostitute.40
In this pun we most probably have the starting point of the tradition
of Mary as a prostitute. But it is hard to see how Christians would have
picked up a hostile rabbinic jibe at Jesus and his mother and then
reapplied it to Mary Magdalene. If, however, the pun originated among
early Aramaic‑speaking Christians who meant to aim it at Mary the
disciple, not Mary Jesus' mother, then its persistence in the Christian
tradition is easier to understand. I suggest that early followers of the
Twelve began this slanderous interpretation of "Magdalene" to discredit
the rival apostle Mary. (The rabbis picked it up from there. )

A very similar attack was made by
John of Patmos on the probably Gnostic prophetess "Jezebel, " whom he
accuses of "beguiling my servants to immorality" and of "commit[ting]
adultery" (Revelation 2:20‑23).41
Compare also the claim that the Gnostic Simon's consort Helen had been
recruited from a brothel, a distortion of Simon's claim to have
delivered the fallen Sophia (incarnate in Helen) from the brothel of
this world.42
Why would Mary's orthodox opponents sink so low as to label her a
prostitute? Remember how in the Gospel of Philip and the Greater
Questions of Mary, Mary Magdalene is closely associated with sexual
intercourse imagery. Of course Gnostics and orthodox Christians alike
spoke of a "marriage supper of the Lamb" (Rev. 19:9), with the church
as the Bride of Christ (Rev. 19:7; 21:2, 9; 22:7; 2 Cor. 11:2; Eph.
5:31‑32) or of the initiatory sacrament of the "bridal chamber" (often
in the Gospel of Philip), but it is always easy to take one's
opponents' imagery literally while understanding one's own figuratively
if it serves one's polemical purposes. Slanderous reports of the
supposed orgiastic revels of Gnostics by the orthodox (as of the
orthodox themselves by their Roman enemies) are so well known that they
need not be rehearsed here. So the longstanding identification of Mary
as a prostitute may originate in the epithet "Magdalene" as slanderously
reinterpreted by her apostolic rivals. And again, later tradition
misunderstood the original polemical nature of the prostitution charge
and assumed Mary was a reformed harlot, converted by Jesus from her
life of sin.43

I have tried to show how the
second and third century Gnostic texts depicting Mary Magdalene as
preeminent among apostles and opposed by Peter are later stages of a
trajectory that can be traced plausibly back into the New Testament
documents. With the paradigm furnished by the noncanonical texts,
several puzzling canonical texts seem to make new sense as reflecting
polemics against claims for Mary's apostleship. If such claims and such
polemics go so far back (e.g., the I Cor. 15 list), they would seem to
stem from the lifetime of the historical Mary Magdalene herself. Both
canonical and noncanonical traditions seem to preserve the memory that
Mary claimed a privileged disciple relationship with Jesus both before
and after the resurrection, that she received unique revelations after
the resurrection, and that these revelations included female equality
with males based on the transcendence of sexuality in a spiritual union
with Christ. Whether she taught more specifically Gnostic ideas known to
us from the later systems is unknown, but her ideas were embraced by
early Christian circles which eventually formed part of Gnostic
Christianity in whose traditions and texts the memory of her
apostleship was kept alive, just as the memory of Peter's apostolic
leadership was preserved in orthodox Christianity .

NOTES

1. It is customary to date this
gospel to about 150 C.E., still a very early date, but recently there
have been attempts to show that Thomas may very well be a first century
C.E. document. See especially Stevan L. Davies, The Gospel of Thomas
and Christian Wisdom (New York: Seabury Press, 1983).

2. Unless otherwise noted, I using
the translation of the Nag Hammadi texts collected in James M. Robinson
(ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library in English (New York: Harper &
Row, Publishers, 1977).

4. The translation here is that of
Wesley W. Isenberg in The Nag Hammadi Library, except that I have
closed the quote later, after the saying on the blind and the sighted,
which seems to answer the disciples' question about Jesus' preference
for Mary Magdalene. Isenberg's punctuation makes it a comment of the
evangelist. The conjectural words in parentheses are supplied
differently in other translations. Bentley Layton leaves some of the
lacunae empty: "The [... loved] her more than [all] the disciples, [and
he used to] kiss her on her [... more] often than the rest of the
[disciples] [...] they said to him, " etc. (Bentley Layton, ed. and
trans., The Gnostic Scriptures [Garden City, New York: Doubleday
& Company, Inc., 1987], 339). R. McL. Wilson translates "[The Lord loved
Mary] more than [all] the disciples, and kissed her on her [mouth]
often. The others too.... they said to him," etc. (R. McL. Wilson,
trans.), The Gospel of Philip [New York: Harper & Row,
Publishers, 1962], 39). The result is much the same.

6. This passage is still so shocking
to pious ears that M. R. James refused to translate it! "Epiphanius in
Her xxvi. 8 quotes the Lesser Questions of Mary: but I must be
excused from repeating the passage. "The Apocryphal New Testament
(Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1972), 20. James means the Greater
Questions of Mary.

7. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza,
In Memory of Her, A Feminist Theological Construction of Christian
Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1984), 276. Fiorenza is dependent on
the work of R. Beor, Philo's Use of the Categories Male and Female
(Leiden: Brill, 1970).

10. For sheer interest's sake,
attention ought to be drawn to a striking parallel in the Mahayana
Buddhist scripture Saddharma‑Pundarika (Lotus of the True Law).
Sariputra says to the daughter of the Naga‑king Sagora, who is seeking
to become a bodhisattva, "'It may happen, sister, that a woman displays
an unflagging energy, performs good works for many thousands of Aeons,
and fulfills the six perfect virtues (Paramitas), but as yet there is
no example of her having received Buddhaship..."' Contrary to
expectation, however, she does receive this distinction: "At that same
instant, before the sight of the whole world and of the senior priest
Sariputra, the female sex of the daughter of Sagara, the Naga‑king,
disappeared; the male sex appeared and she manifested herself as a
Bodhisattva...." (Xl:51). H. Kern (trans.) Saddharma‑Pundarika, or
Lotus of the True Law (New York: Dover Publications, 1963),
252‑253.

15. This observation might suggest a
new perspective for the Pagels‑Perkins‑Fiorenza discussion: do the Mary
vs. Peter Gnostic texts perhaps imply an intra‑Gnostic struggle over
women's authority, since in these texts Peter, too, is a Gnostic
spokesman?

20. Reginald H. Fuller, The
Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (New York: The Macmillan
Company, 1971), 52: "Attempts to combine [the resurrection traditions]
by means of inspired guesses and hypotheses, of which F. F. Morrison's
[sic] Who Moved the Stone? has been for so long known as an
outstanding and brilliant example, are really defeated from the start.
For what have to be combined are not a number of scattered pieces from
an originally single matrix, but separate expressions of the Easter
faith. Each of these is complete in itself; each has developed along its
own line so as to serve in the end as a proper conclusion for an
evangelist of his own particular version of the gospel.” C.F. Evans,
Resurrection and the New Testament (Naperville, Illinois: Alec R.
Allenson Inc., 1970), 128.

22. See the discussion of Rudolf
Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Philadelphia: The
Westminster Press, 1975), 681.

23. Some scholars doubt that the
empty tomb stories could be historical since they seem to betray
ignorance of conditions in Palestine, where the heat would make it
futile even to try to anoint a body for preservation as late as the
third day. Others discount only this motive attributed to the women for
their visit to the tomb (e.g., D. E. Nineham, Saint Mark
[Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1975], 443), supposing instead that they
simply went to the tomb to mourn, a natural enough circumstance. Notice
that the problematical anointing business is absent from the
original pericope John 20:1, 11‑18, an important point in favor of the
historical character of the story of Mary Magdalene's Easter revelation.

24. Raymond E. Brown (The
Community of the Beloved Disciple [New York: Paulist Press, 1979],
154) suggests that it was John 20:1‑18, i.e., the appearance to Mary in
its canonical form, as the first in a series, that inspired the use of
Mary as a revealer in the later Gnostic texts. This is once again to
make the link with Mary Magdalene a purely literary one. By
contrast, we are suggesting that the link is a historical one,
and that the experience reflected in the original pericope John
20:1,11‑18, was the basis for Mary's actual claim to apostolic status,
and that this claim continues to be reflected in the later Gnostic texts
not because of literary borrowing but because of historical memory. The
very preservation of the original pericope John 20:1, 11‑18 presupposes
a Sitz‑im‑Leben in which a group of early Christians cherished
and passed down the story of Mary's unique Easter revelation,
thus a circle of Christians for whom Mary was the chief apostle. How
else could the original, independent episode have survived long enough
for the fourth evangelist to co‑opt it?

25. Thus Luke's downplaying of Mary
Magdalene would be part and parcel of his subtle but systematic polemic
against Gnosticism, a key purpose of Luke's writings ably demonstrated
by Charles H. Talbert, Luke and the Gnostics (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1966). Fiorenza errs, in our opinion, when she claims that Luke
includes Mary Magdalene and other women among the "apostolic witnesses"
(p. 321) because of Acts 13:31. She ignores Luke's clear restriction of
this category of eyewitness‑apostles to a special group, "the eleven,"
within the larger number of disciples in Acts 1:15‑26.

26. Fuller, 65. For more discussion
of the theory that Mark's hypothetical original ending was lost, see R.
H. Lightfoot, The Gospel Message of St. Mark, chapter Vl I, "St.
Mark's Gospel--Complete or Incomplete?" (London: Oxford University
Press, 1962), 80‑97.

27. Charles H. Talbert, What Is a
Gospel? The Genre of the Canonical Gospels (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1977), 25‑35.

30. Fiorenza, 322, in dependence on
D. Catchpole, "The Fearful Silence of the Women at the Tomb: A Study in
Markan Theology," Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 18
(1977) 3‑10. Perhaps Catchpole and Fiorenza are unconsciously
harmonizing Mark 1:44 with Luke 10:4 and its prototype 2 Kings 4:29?

35. Weeden, 50; see also Norman
Perrin, The Resurrection according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 30.

36. Bultmann, Gospel of John,
682.
2

37. Even as the text now reads, the
factional‑polemical implications of the pericope are clear, only the
rivalry is that between Peter and the Beloved Disciple (or, rather,
their later factions). See Bultmann, Gospel of John, 484, 685.
Though Raymond E. Brown rejects any such polemical character for this
story in his The Gospel according to John, Vol. II (Garden City,
New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1970), 1006, he has come to embrace
such an interpretation in his The Community of the Beloved Disciple
(New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 84.

38. Fiorenza sees the I Corinthians
15 list, with Luke 24, as attesting the tradition of Peter as the first
witness of the risen Lord, in contrast to Matthew 28, the Markan
appendix, and John as attesting the primacy of Mary Magdalene, but she
does not make clear that the two pro‑Peter texts may actually intend to
suppress the pro‑Mary tradition, as we are suggesting. 1 Corinthians 15
reads as it does because of anti‑Magdalene polemics.

39. See the convenient summary of the
evidence for this now‑common reading of Luke's treatment of Paul in
Fuller, 45‑46.

41. Could "Jezebel" (obviously a
cipher‑name) actually be Mary Magdalene, tarred with the usual
charges of Gnostic libertinism?

42. For Simon's rescue of Helen from
a brothel, see Irenaeus Adversus Haereses 1.23.2. John M. Allegro
in The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth (Devon: Westbridge
Books, 1979), 143, 167ff, goes so far as to suggest that Jesus and Mary
Magdalene are actually Christian versions of Simon and Helen, all four
being purely mythical characters! I of course do not follow Allegro
here, wishing only to indicate parallel slanders directed toward
prominent Gnostic women disciples.

43. An alternate possibility raised
by Allegro (Dead Sea Scrolls, 168) is that "Magdalene" is simply
the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew for "hairdresser" (i.e.,
prostitute) and that only in later reinterpretation was the epithet
first understood as meaning "of Magdala" by gospel readers who no
longer remembered the original meaning. This is possible, only I would
suggest a polemical rather than mythical origin of the epithet and its
intention.